Human Powered Helicopter Lifts Off

Last summer a team of engineering students from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland created a human-powered helicopter called Gamera, they managed to get it off the ground and keep it aloft for 11 seconds. However their new model, the Gamera 2 managed to stay airborne for a solid 50 seconds, smashing the world record.

The Gamera II has been improved from its predecessor in many ways. It is 105 feet across, and each of the four rotors are 42 feet long. Thanks to the weight saving benefits of carbon fibre the entire helicopter weighs just 32 kilos, which is over 13 kilos lighter than the previous design.

Prove to me that it’s fake. Why do you think it’s fake. Don’t you think it’s possible? Where did you get your fucking aeronautical engineering degree (from a young earth creationists website). How do you fucking know?

Bullshit!I bet you couldn’t take-off from the ground under you own power and fly for any longer than one-tenth of a second (only jump) with a bed-sheet. And if you jumped off a building and glided with just a bed-sheet for longer than 50 seconds, you would be well-and-truly in the record books. You are what I call a “knocker”. You go and build a human powered helicopter and beat the record (if you think you are better than them) dip-shit.

It turns out piloting a human-powered helicopter takes a lot more than just pedaling your ass off.The official challenge of flying (and powering) a helicopter for at least 60 seconds, to a height of three meters and staying within a 10 meter square has been around since 1980. Several teams have tried, and all have failed.“It’s really a mix of power at the right time and control, and finesse,” pilot/engine Colin Gore told us in describing how to fly one of two helicopters currently trying to win the $250,000 Sikorsky prize.Gore is part of a team from the University of Maryland that hopes to finally claim the human powered helicopter title this weekend and end their heated battle with a team of Canadians also trying to find the perfect balance of power, control and design.The Gamera II is huge. It has four large, slow turning rotors, each nearly 43 feet across, and has a total width of 105 feet. Yet it weighs just 71 pounds. The ultra low weight is accomplished using a carbon fiber truss structure that provides just (barely) enough structural strength to keep it from collapsing. The hyper-delicate nature of the craft poses the biggest challenge to getting it airborne — and keeping it there. Pedaling too hard can cause the rotors to self-destruct.Gore is pursuing a doctoral degree in material sciences at the University of Maryland and one of just five people who fly the human-powered helicopter. Unlike the Canadian design, which basically suspends a bicycle beneath the helicopter, the Gamera II pilot sits suspended beneath the contraption and uses his legs and arms to turn two sets of pedals. Timing is everything.“The blades have momentum and you have to give it time to come up to speed a little before you take off so the impulse you put on it doesn’t break things,” he said. “It’s a delicate craft.”Although the helicopter must achieve an altitude of three meters (~10 feet), it only has to reach that height once. Gore says the key is to meet that requirement as soon as you get the rotors up to speed.“You need to make a decisive moment where you apply full power, climb as high as you can, up above 10 feet,” he says. “Then you let off the power but that transition between climbing and dropping down again, you need to be very careful about maintaining a fluid stroke because if there’s a fraction of a second where you are basically letting go of it, the helicopter is going to drift horribly.”Gore says any large amount of lateral drift quickly gets to the point of being unrecoverable. And when the drift is combined with one part of the helicopter losing altitude, a weekend ending crash is the result.The pilots do have some control beyond applying the power. Gore says the details are a closely guarded secret, but the craft has switches the pilot can engage with their thumbs to exert some measure of control over the rotors.“It’s basically a very clever way of managing the power to each of the rotors so we can correct for drift,” he said.Gore believes the ability to use his arms and legs gives the team an advantage because it smooths out the power strokes during the flight.“We have these dynamic loads, and putting the arms in there is sort of like putting a battery in there where you can manage, level out the peaks of that curve,” he said.The pilots are all students at the University of Maryland. Gore says they initially looked at local cycling clubs and racing teams, but they didn’t get a ton of interest. They also discovered that elite strength wasn’t a guarantee of a good flight. They ended up testing one successful racer from Washington D.C., “but he still weighed 145 pounds,” Gore says.The extra strength didn’t offset the the extra weight. The pilots tip the scales between 120 and 135 pounds. (Insert skinny engineer joke here.)The team spent much of today setting up their helicopter and preparing for this weekend’s flights. If all goes well, they hope to begin making some initial test flights in the morning, and make the first attempts at the prize mid day Saturday.

P51 Fave Link: „A human powered helicopter built by students from the University of Maryland and piloted by Kyle Gluesenkamp set a new world record of 50 seconds! This flight was over twice as long as the previous world record of 19.4 seconds by Akira Naito in 1994.“

imagine this with an electric motor and perhaps pedal assist witht he right gearing so to keep up with the motor rpm. I think electric pedal assist is what we should concentrate on. I have figured human power alone won’t do it but i could be wrong.

Sorry, you read it wrong. I was replying to another comment, about the comparison with regular bicycles. Sitting bikes are “very inefficient in terms of aerodynamic and human energy use.”. The second part of my comment is about the “sitting position” used for this purpose, which looks very adequate!

Sorry, you read it wrong. I was replying to another comment, about the comparison with regular bicycles. Sitting bikes are “very inefficient in terms of aerodynamic and human energy use.”. The second part of my comment is about the “sitting position” used for this purpose, which looks very adequate!

You obviously have no clue what kind of engineering went into that thing. It is, in fact, the most aerodynamically and energy-use-wise human powered helicopter ever in existence. If they wanted to power it from about a dozen laptop batteries, it could stay aloft for an hour.

You obviously have no clue what kind of engineering went into that thing. It is, in fact, the most aerodynamically and energy-use-wise human powered helicopter ever in existence. If they wanted to power it from about a dozen laptop batteries, it could stay aloft for an hour.

it woultn’t fly to any hight above 1 meter…air pressure above ground is bigger….if it would fly even 50cm higher, pressure would decrease….so that’s why it didn’t continue in rising up:…..the same with high speed pc fans….it would rise few milimeters above ground but that’s all…..ground effect

They should have positioned the hand crank lower. Circulation of blood is reduced in the current position (for that pilot) so the arms will tire very quicklly. I would also suggest a horizontal configuration using a pulley and such that a rowing action can be used .. But that may add to the complexity and weight.

They should have positioned the hand crank lower. Circulation of blood is reduced in the current position (for that pilot) so the arms will tire very quicklly. I would also suggest a horizontal configuration using a pulley and such that a rowing action can be used .. But that may add to the complexity and weight.

What’s up with all the hateful reactions? The Dwights’ brothers first plane didn’t last that long either. These students build the future! Thanks to inventions like this one here, we could be flying our own 1 person-helicopters. Give them some support folks!

If you have not considered it or tried it you might. All it would take is to have a custom wheel made for the one without cranks on it. I have two reasons to believe this would help. 1 it will help sustain rpm and 2 it will keep the rider from having choppy pedal strokes giving a pulse like response to the machine. Think about it try it.

If you have not considered it or tried it you might. All it would take is to have a custom wheel made for the one without cranks on it. I have two reasons to believe this would help. 1 it will help sustain rpm and 2 it will keep the rider from having choppy pedal strokes giving a pulse like response to the machine. Think about it try it.

If he needs to supply 1hp to keep the rotors at speed, it remains 1hp whether he has a 10lb or 1000lb flywheel. The rotors are enormous flywheels and any additional flywheel would only add weight and transmission losses. If you mean powering up the flywheel on the ground then releasing the power at a greater-than-human rate, that would work better but probably breaks the human-powered rule.

If, as I expect, this is in large part a course study project, I applaud those who dreamed up this endeavour as the student target. Being highly innovative – though of course by iteration of existing technology as are all inventions to some degree – it both educates the team and advances the state of the art. These students are learning how to be more innovative engineers, those on whom the whole world depends for our great modern way of life.

Great job Team Gamera. Someone noted that arms and legs are only good for about 500 watts. I have produced over 800 watts and I’m not at peak fitness. What you see here is basically a skirtless hovercraft. Three meters will take energy storage in the rotor mass then release it with increased angle of attack. There will be flight duration or height records but not both at the same time. Again great job Team Gamera.

Gamera II is the second human powered helicopter from the University of Maryland’s Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center. Video evidence suggests the helicopter, piloted by Kyle Gluesenkamp, flew for 50 seconds!

Further, it is impossible to predict the ways in which this kind of thing can ultimately benefit mankind, unless you are God. Many human achievements and new technologies (even those thought to be purely academic) benefited mankind in ways that remained unidentified until long after the achievement.

They are benefiting mankind merely by pursuing something peaceful and not participating in the kind of sports and entertainment that are indeed currently destroying mankind. They are generating interest in something that is noble and non-violent. They are working as a team to ignite the imagination of millions of people with their pursuit of the Sikorsky Prize.

As an avid cyclist, the ergonomics of any pedal-driven device can make a huge difference in output efficiency. With some tweaks I think U of M team can easily get to the 60 second mark. Congrats on the great show!

How wonderful !! As science wil come up with even lichter and stronger materials; the sky wil no longer be the limit!! And as all trolls that only can come up with negative dribble on all these videos of marvalous scientific breakthrougs will hopfully kill themselfs soon (the only positive thing they could do) The surviving good fibe will push science to even bigger milestones.

All methods of flight are based off an exchange of expending energy through drag in the prop blades and wings, but my method applies most of that energy into creating thrust/lift using special max angle of attack prop mechanisms, whereas all traditional methods waste the majority of motor energy by producing several times more rotational prop drag than forward thrust/lift. My method is literally using the drag force on the prop blades as direct mechanical leverage for lift/thrust.

My research has gone beyond anything I’ve seen or ever heard of online. I’ve figured out that a prop system involving a 90 degree angle of attack in a linear motion with two plate-shaped props can have an 80% efficiency of motor HP input to /liftthrust HP output. Flying VTOL cars, perfect VTOL jetpacks, you name it- would all be possible and practical with this new method of flight.If I could build a prototype of a human-powered version of this it would only weigh 20 lbs and win the Sikorsky.

You are so full of shit, it hurts. First of all, it’s not strong enough- it’s already broken with minimal use; it’s a fragile piece of shit that’s not going to ever be practical for human-powered flight as otherwise it will be too heavy for that. Second- it is utterly USELESS for conventional aircraft, as it relies almost exclusively on an extreme ground effect and has no use for anything that needs to go more than two feet off the ground.

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Aside from being an awe-inspiring proof of concept, this project has numerous applications. To my knowledge, personal human-powered aircraft – the one you seem to find ridiculous – is not one of them.Creating a structure strong enough for flight but light enough for a human to power requires you to completely rethink how aircraft are designed. The know-how and techniques that made this flight possible are incredibly promising for improving the efficiency and strength of conventional aircraft.

Oh, the definition of a helicopter. How about the definition of the word “Practical”? The best designs are the simplest, but they are also ones that work and are practical. If you are going to have something controlled by “brain waves” which is a ridiculous idea, then you are going to need computers, and that means a parasitic generator for the electricity to run the generator or the added weight of solar panels, servo motors etc.. anyone can design something impractical and useless like this…

I’ll bet you’ve never designed or built anything in your life. The definition of helicopter incorporates none of the things you claim it does. As far as I’m concerned, this is a helicopter. In the future, a control system for moving forward and turning by slowing 1 or 2 rotors based on something that uses brain waves can probably be implemented with very little weight cost. Someone like Lance Armstrong may be able to fly it for 10 minutes, which is enough to get across a gator infested moat.

How is that a helicopter? I would call it a hovering platform at best. Does nothing but go up and down. When someone builds one that can go up, the pilot can turn it and travel in any direction they choose, then you will have a helicopter. This thing does not even look like it would have any stability to stay upright or do anything in a breeze but get torn apart.

How is that a helicopter? I would call it a hovering platform at best. Does nothing but go up and down. When someone builds one that can go up, the pilot can turn it and travel in any direction they choose, then you will have a helicopter. This thing does not even look like it would have any stability to stay upright or do anything in a breeze but get torn apart.

An upright cyclist can shift his bodyweight from pedal to pedal thus working with gravity to drive the pedals–especially in sprints and climbs while standing (not seated). A recumbant cyclist relies solely on power derived through muscular contraction. The hand pedals are not going to help either since the limiting factor is the work capacity of the cyclist. The extra set of gears and pedals just add weight.

An upright cyclist can shift his bodyweight from pedal to pedal thus working with gravity to drive the pedals–especially in sprints and climbs while standing (not seated). A recumbant cyclist relies solely on power derived through muscular contraction. The hand pedals are not going to help either since the limiting factor is the work capacity of the cyclist. The extra set of gears and pedals just add weight.

How a professional biker sits is limited by the equipment he has to use, for example recumbent bicycles are illegal, and by the fact that professional cyclists cannot use their arms to power their vehicles.

You have to start somewhere and all advanced technologies start with simple tests that don’t seem significant on their own. But in the totality of everything, down the road this might be the catalyst of something great

So what’s the point of all that? No controls at all, just brute power. Well there is one good point actually it’s a good exercise highly recommend to all the americans, most of whom won’t last even 10 seconds -)

smoke you under the table and still be able to beat you mentally, physically, or spiritually. Silly cluck. You’re a jive-ass turkey and nothing more! REMEMBER my boast. I’ll smoke more weed than you could carry on your back and then proceed to defeat you in any and or all of the realms of the mental, physical or the spiritual. REMEMBER this day, when I clearly pointed out your jive, your anal, and your turkey like tendencies you jive-ass turkey. REMEMBER!

smoke you under the table and still be able to beat you mentally, physically, or spiritually. Silly cluck. You’re a jive-ass turkey and nothing more! REMEMBER my boast. I’ll smoke more weed than you could carry on your back and then proceed to defeat you in any and or all of the realms of the mental, physical or the spiritual. REMEMBER this day, when I clearly pointed out your jive, your anal, and your turkey like tendencies you jive-ass turkey. REMEMBER!

Getting closer to the Sikorsky prize: a prize of $20,000 US (Twenty Thousand) will be paid to the first to fly a human powered helicopter for at least 60 seconds and a momentary height of 3 meters.These guys got close to 60 seconds, but not 3 meters. Hopefully some day.

Toward the advancement of aeronautical engineering. I’m no engineer, but I do understand that learning to build lighter aircraft (or helicopters, in this case) that require less energy to power will ultimately lead to more efficient aircrafts — less fuel, pollution and dollars. The vehicle in the video is just a stepping stone in the process. It’s not expected to be practical.These kids and others like them are the best hope of American ingenuity. They should be applauded, not ridiculed.

*Adjusts glasses* According to my calculations…power density required: w = sqrt((g^3 *M) / (rho*A)) [W/kg]M = total system mass [kg]g = gravitational constant [9.81 m/s2]rho = air density [1.20 kg/m3]So assuming you can create a craft large enough with limited human power density, it should be totally possible. Just about getting it to a size where specific lift energy is low enough…

Wish they’d have uploaded a version with proper audio narration and not all this noise. Already watching your video, I gotta *read* about this to figure out what’s going on? No thxtl;dr: Pedal powered heli 50 seconds. omg.

Daily Do-Dad: June 25th, 2012Gamera 2Last summer a team from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland created a human-powered helicopter called Gamera, and managed to get it off the ground for 11 seconds. Last year’s Gamera was pretty amazing, but the Gamera II has been improved in many ways. It’s 105 feet across, and each of the four rotors are 42 feet long. For all that, it weighs only 71 pounds, which is 30 pounds lighter than last year’s model. Thank you, carbon fiber. The engine is a single human who uses both foot and hand pedals.Gamera II HPH World Record Flight: 50 seconds#hover #fly #helicopter #gameraii #worldrecord #june25

Daily Do-Dad: June 25th, 2012Gamera 2Last summer a team from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland created a human-powered helicopter called Gamera, and managed to get it off the ground for 11 seconds. Last year’s Gamera was pretty amazing, but the Gamera II has been improved in many ways. It’s 105 feet across, and each of the four rotors are 42 feet long. For all that, it weighs only 71 pounds, which is 30 pounds lighter than last year’s model. Thank you, carbon fiber. The engine is a single human who uses both foot and hand pedals.Gamera II HPH World Record Flight: 50 seconds#hover #fly #helicopter #gameraii #worldrecord #june25

Daily Do-Dad: June 25th, 2012Gamera 2Last summer a team from the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland created a human-powered helicopter called Gamera, and managed to get it off the ground for 11 seconds. Last year’s Gamera was pretty amazing, but the Gamera II has been improved in many ways. It’s 105 feet across, and each of the four rotors are 42 feet long. For all that, it weighs only 71 pounds, which is 30 pounds lighter than last year’s model. Thank you, carbon fiber. The engine is a single human who uses both foot and hand pedals.Gamera II HPH World Record Flight: 50 seconds#hover #fly #helicopter #gameraii #worldrecord #june25

My guess is that the craft was designed to take advantage of the ground effect, as others have mentioned. So a tri or quad rotor configuration was the only way to get the blades close enough to the ground to do this. A single blade sitting atop the cockpit wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the ground effect. The idea here is just to get the craft off the ground. Some other configuration will be needed for the height record.

Good example of a rotating wings in ground effect. ANY chance at it being able to get to 3 meters to get the prize? There was a human powered plane that flew helped by the ground effect before the gossamer albatross. It couldn’t make the hop to 3 meters to get the prize.Good luck tho om the 3 meter hop, and staying in the 20 meter square.

However I think ground effect plays a big part here, helps get it off the ground, but then not much higher. That will be the next challenge: More height and directional control.Great work so far though

Record-setting 50-second flight of the human powered helicopter, Gamera II, from University of Maryland! Piloted by Kyle Gluesenkamp. Shout out to pilot Colin Gore who also flew for 49.2 seconds right afterwards! #gamera